Murderball Discussion Questions

Murderball

Autumn Ruffini

Central Michigan University

RPL 110: Exp of Disability and Soc Marginalization

Shay Dawson

May 10, 2023

Murderball

Watching Murderball, the documentary by Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro opens your eyes. While this documentary proves everyone’s stereotypes wrong and helps build people with a physical disabilities character. It proves to many people that physically disabled people aren’t just tied to a chair like a prison they can escape and do what they never though was possible.

Stigma/Marginalization

I think that this documentary fights against stigma / social marginalization. While explaining what wheelchair rugby is and the backstory of some of the players it fights the stigma what is put on people

This sport does have a unique position in society as many people don’t know about it since it’s not on the main sport channels people typically watch. As many people have conversations throughout their day talking about disabilities in general is normally not in it. While this might be a good thing it can be a bad thing as people aren’t comfortable talking about disabilities openly. When you don’t have family or relatives with a physical disability it’s therefore uncommon for you and you might jump to conclusions when you see someone with a physical disability. What a facilitator can do to open the eyes of people that don’t have a disability is to talk about it, answer questions, make it ok to talk about rather than them thinking the wrong things about people with disabilities. While in the documentary a group of kids watched one of the U.S. Wheelchair Rugby games afterwards, they got to get the players autographs and talk with them. The kids were open to ask questions to the players. In one scene a little girl asks pro wheelchair rugby player, Bob Lujano how he lost his arms and he calmy said from a blood disease when he was little thinking he scared the kids he said to them that he’s alright and that’s all that matters in the end that he’s alive (Murderball, 2005, 48:42). Taking that trip to the game probably helped the little kids in the future getting that exposure to people with disabilities seeing that they’re just normal people. While kids

I think that there is a little bit of a Super Crip theme that is shown in Murderball. Throughout the entire documentary the people on the U.S. wheelchair rugby team were proving everyone wrong. They were standing up to what was thought of them and succeeding everyone’s expectation. They all have accepted their disability and are trying to do the best they can with what they have because there still alive, not trying to rise to “normality” with everyone else. “Dramatically, this image is useful to script writers for whom a disabled person’s triumph over their impairment is a metaphor for the more general human struggle to overcome life’s obstacles.” (Harnett, 2000, p.22) In this movie the rugby players with a physical disability are the main point of view, which very rarely ever happens in films. Normally people with disabilities are made out to be the bad guy giving people the wrong image of disability all together. While people without disabilities are using them as an example, they are fighting to prove to themselves that they can do